As you can see, the real reason why they work so well together is because they have an actual relationship– a very strong bond, which is key to everything.
Check out Leonard Cecil’s Youtube channel and website for more information. He has a wonderful resource on dog behavior literature that is worth checking out.
His Youtube channel description explain it all:
I’ve been a dog owner and lover for over 45 years. I used to be a so-called leash-popper, then a so-called balanced trainer and now I’m a +R/-P trainer and use neither choke collar, prong collar nor shock collar. I am neither the Alpha of my pack, nor the leader of my pack. I do have a relationship with my dog based upon mutual trust and respect. I want my dog to want to be with me and share her life with me for the same reason I do with her – because it’s in our joint best interest to do so and it’s fun. So that means, there are times we do what she wants and there are time we do what I want. There are times a “no” is allowed and times it’s not. Rules exist and are enforced without force, pain or fear. In June 2011 I will be finishing my Canine Behavior Science and Technology (Cert.CBST) through James O’Heare’s Companion Animal Sciences Institute. This is a certification concentrating on Dog Training and Dog Behavioral Modification. I do NOT consider myself a “Clicker Trainer” because I do not train clickers. I do however often use clickers in training as a tool. I’m not a “cookie” thrower. I eat cookies but find it rude to throw them, I do however use rewards to tell my dog she did a good job. The rewards consist of treats, play, an encouraging word of praise, a chest rub or ?? I do use punishment where necessary, but without instilling fear, pain, or touching the dog (see the term “negative punishment”). I do hope my dog does NOT know what the meaning of the word “training” is, but rather understands it to be the word “fun.”
This is where dog training is headed.
I think that most people want to have relationships with their dogs like the one Leonard Cecil and Vela have.
That’s why these methods will become the only socially acceptable way to train dogs in the very near future.
We all need to get used to this reality– and embrace them.
For some reason–which I am sure is almost entirely cultural– it is very hard for Americans to embrace these ideas.
But we’ll catch up with the rest of the Western world eventually.
I’m convinced.
More here from a different source:
The working type golden retriever is quite remarkable.
Not just because of the behavior but because of its resemblance to a red flat-coated retriever.
LOL
You thought I was telling a big one when I said goldens could retrieve eggs without breaking them!
The average person cannot make the huge time investment it takes to achieve a ‘clicker partnership’, nor is every dog suited to that (in fact speaking from 40 years as a pro trainer, with no particular training program or religion, MOST dogs are not).
However, this new philosophy is causing a huge upsurge in the number of problem pets, since it renders the average pet uncontrollable to the average person. We never used to see so many out-of-control dogs (and dogs that threaten to bite to get their own way) nor so many frustrated owners who have no idea how to rectify the situation… but I’ve watched that grow apace with treats, clickers, and “positive only” training (and the mistaken notion that the “old ways” are all “dominance and punishment”).
Politically correct, yeah. A good thing… not really. It actually derives directly from the “new education” methods that started about 1960, and that gave us today’s generation of undereducated kids who think the world owes them a living. (Lest dog trainers think they invented treat-rewards and “positive only”…)
BTW my first purebred Lab could retrieve a raw egg without breaking it. Not so different from retrieving a dove without bruising the meat.
oy… the notion that positive training is what causes bad pet behavior… no wonder it comes from someone who’s been teaching for 40 years. And apparently never learned anything since. How many times do we have to say that “positive does not mean without correction”???
Dunbar has a fascinating little lecture up about “punishment”. http://www.dogstardaily.com/blogs/binary-feedback-puts-b-balanced-dog-training
The point in all dog training is to give the dog information about what’s right and what’s wrong. Dogs don’t need to be jerked or shocked (or “vibrated” in the unpositively trained version of “politically correct”) to be given information.
The notion that unpositively trained dogs always behave well is just plain stupid. I can’t imagine what world Reziac is living in. He probably thinks all of Milan’s “hang ’em till they submit” dogs behave like saints once he’s left, too.
Good dog trainers can get good results using whatever tools (or methods) they choose. Poor trainers can use any tools (methods) and get poor results. There are far more mediocre to poor dog trainers than good ones, overall– and this has almost certainly always been true.
Good trainers know HOW to use those tools/methods for best results, because they understand dogs, and know how to connect with them.
Unfortunately, most who attempt to train dogs, aren’t that good, don’t really know what they are doing, or what they should be doing.
Unfortunately a great deal of training in various European nations is still force based. The United States is not behind in this regard. Hopefully everyone will keep learning!
Personally I’ve always had a “relationship” with my dogs as opposed to being the OMG!Alpha, and my animals have always been well mannered and listened to me, because we liked and respected each other. Force really, really wasn’t necessary — though yes, I’ve come up through old style training, and used some of it because that’s what I was taught to do, now I have learned better methods. Most of what I achieved in the past with my dogs was based on gently guiding their behavior to what I wanted as opposed to looking for and punishing the mis-steps in any case. Before anyone jumps in with an argument about breed temperament, I’ve always had working GSDs, so it’s not like I’ve been dealing with a meek breed. The current dog is very determined and hard-headed, but by dint of patience and redirection he’s learning that doing what I want is the best route to getting what he wants. He was badly damaged, too, before I adopted him, but with a bit of work I have an increasingly versatile and stellar dog. Jerking, poking, and shocking are all unnessary (though I understand that vibrating/e-collars *appropriately* used have their place in directing the dog over long distance, or if the animal is deaf).
Sorry, but I find all this just more silly semantics! You ARE STILL THE ALPHA if YOU are the one directing the dog to come here, fetch the shoe, open the door, etc. etc. The dog is doing these things because it accepts you(the human) as the Alpha. And there is a difference between alphas/leaders. The OMG!Alpha is the tyrannical kind. The kind, benevolent alpha is another kind–the kind described and illustrated here–but the humans are STILL the alphas! You don’t see these dogs ordering the people around doing pointless(in their minds, I’m sure a lot of these tasks are viewed as purty pointless!) tasks. A mutually benevolent relationship where dogs and humans are equal? Romantic nonsense! If any of those trainers get a dog with a REALLY dominant mind of it’s own, that REALLY does just what it pleases most of the time(or at least gets it way equally as much as the human), they’d have a totally different perspective! But no, they’d just get rid of or euthanize any dog that demanded equal rights as “having a bad temperment”!!! The dog benefits from the association BECAUSE the human is in charge, which is what is best in a totally human dominated world–a dog won’t live long if it gets to do just what it wants whenever it wants around humans! This is why people are so negative towards wolves or wolf hybrids as pets, because THAT really DOES demand a more equal relationship, and most humans won’t tolerate it! The dogs’ relationships so unrealistically described here are because those dog types have been severely selected for subordinate, compliant behaviour for CENTURIES!!! There ain’t nuthin’ EQUAL about it! That said, being subordinate doesn’t necessarily mean being ABUSED or not having a great life–and who wouldn’t prefer to be trained or dominated with positive methods? I wish some of my human employers thought that way…..But in a human dominated world, YOU, the human HAVE to be the alpha, to wisely lead and instruct your dog to keep it from getting killed or hurt in any one of a zillion ways they cannot possibly conceive without your protection and instruction. How can anyone say they say “NO” to their dogs, and not realize that is BLATANTLY an alpha word and concept? Silly semantics…..
If I might interject here – also in Europe there are only islands of +R/-P training going on. I’m one of only a couple in my area. In certain dog-activities here it’s almost unheard of. Field trials in Germany and Switzerland are almost entirely compulsion based.
One of the reasons for this is, well it mostly worked in the past. Of course when you look closer at the dog-human team, what worked was a continual process of start-correction-restart. Take loose-leash walking as an example. Walk a few feet, jerk the leash, say “heel”, go on, jerk the leash, say “heel”, walk on. Had the dog learned loose-leash walking? Not really. the dog had learned to walk, get a jerk, walk, get a jerk.
The idea behind clicker Training is not the clicker itself. It’s that you actually first teach the dog what is correct, then you train. The idea that there is no punishment in clicker Training is also a misnomer. But as dr. Dunbar says, there is nothing that demands, that punishment has to be painful or fearful. So if it doesn’t have to be, why should it be.
Ok, so what does punishment look like if it’s neither painful nor fearful. I’ll give you an example from today’s walk. We’re working on impulse control during dummy training. I do NOT train dummy with Vela, my wife does. But she isn’t as experienced with +R/-P, especially what is a reinforcer and what is a punisher. the goals is to toss 2 dummies with the dog at sit-stay at a short distance away. Then comes the walk-up, where you walk with the dog off-leash to the point, where you send the dog to retrieve the thrown dummy. Vela had developed a learned behavior, that instead of stopping upon command, she would take a couple more steps in the same direction. My wife reinforced this by telling her sit and then moving up to her. and then sending Vela off to retrieve. Vela’s reward for doing her version was to get to retrieve. Well, I stopped that. I walked to the point of retrieval and gave the command to stop, which is a body posture command, not vocal. She did her normal 2 steps ahead. instead of moving towards her, I turned around and went back towards where we’d come from – ie I did NOT reward her misbehavior by letting her retrieve. I took away the reward of retrieving. This is the -P of the +R/-P coupling. Vela was frustrated, but she sure looked hard at me when we did the walk-up again and stopped on a dime right next to me. She’d known what the command was, she just had worked out, that she could change it and it would still work for her. Well, not any more. A traditionalist would have scruffed her and put her into a proper sit. Vela however is hypersensitive and wouldn’t have retrieved at all after that. I arrived at the same point as the traditionalist – compliance with the original command, taught Vela that if sh wanted to retrieve, she would have to do it as it should be. this using a punishment that was neither fearful nor painful. BTW- I did not use a clicker during this teaching – I could have, but I used a marker word instead. Clicker Training does not REQUIRE a clicker. When working with deaf dogs, you do Clicker Training with a laser pen as a marker.
This is not PC – this is called using science, as Dr. Dunbar would say, with feeling. Negative punishment is, in this manner a teaching and training tool, just as reward is. reward is not necessarily food. In this case, the reward was being allowed to retrieve – a higher value reward to a retriever than food ever could be. After working 2 20 minute sessions with my wife on this type of methodology, she had no problems continuing training Vela and reported after the next group dummy session, that that was no longer a problem. it doesn’t take any longer than “normal” training at all, probably less time, because you’re not continually correcting, you’re teaching.
For a more detailed description of what +R / -P is as opposed to old school which is at best +R / +P or even -R (for example continually shocking a dog until it stops the undesired behavior, the reward for doing so is the stopping of the shock), see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning
Happy training!
Yeah, what I was talking about more was not field trials so much.
But from what I understand in the UK and Scandinavia, the vast majority of pet dogs are trained using these methods.
We are still trying to develop a trial or test system that allows us to utilize these methods.
I don’t know if you know of Laddie and Lumi, but they are both goldens being tested in the AKC hunt test system for retrievers– using these very same methods.
I think people fundamentally don’t understand punishment from a behavioral analysis standpoint. It is almost a term of art, which prevents people from actually understanding what we’re talking about.
Not only is it science-based, but it allows for a much more creative approach to dog training.
Based admittedly on a small sample, I think many of the pre-World War 2 dog training books wrote of dogs as if they could reason.
After WW2, the people buying the training books were a different crowd – returned soldiers from long bloody battles, women who had worked 12-16 hour shifts with only 4 hours off on Sunday mornings (6 1/2 days a week).
People very willing to leave the past behind – they looked to science in ways that the common person had not done before. Much of the new science had been the science of war.
Some of the post-WW2 dog training books clearly come from knowledge assembled from training wardogs. Wardogs have to stand up to pain and confusing distractions.
I feel that the jerk & pop, Alpha dominance thing is much like the books written post WW2 – geared for wardogs – and I understand that today, less harsh training measures are used in training these dogs now too.
Most dogs live in pet homes, and pet people need training methods that they and their children can use. Trying that “I’m Alpha and you are my dog” just wont win friends on the playground. Unless you are a big kid, that attitude could cause more trouble for you.
Click & treat might sound like a silly phrase, but it works for training sit-stays, and that is as far as many families ever bother with, before they lose interest in training their dog.
A lot of it comes from Germany, that was how the Imperial German army trained its dogs, as did the constabulary in the Germany cities.
Probably true, that the first to systematize dog training was the military and police. And they were not working with “pet” dogs. Those who trained sporting dogs for the field, and herding dogs, also early on, but in a somewhat more individual manner.
Most of the police/military were also working with inexperienced men and well as dogs; they had to teach/train both.
Many of the ex-military dog trainers became very active in the then-new sport of obedience training and trials. I knew some of them, and their dogs. They had a lot to teach that was extremely valuable. (And they were not those OMG!alpha-types, either.) The good ones understood and used the major principles of “R / P” without the explication that we now have.
you can overdo anything. The video doesn’t show the dogs doing something they don’t want to do nor stopping an activity they really want. Now if you could clicker train a field type golden to NEVER retrieve, NEVER put anything in it’s mout that wasn’t put in it’s bowl, it might be different. Clicker training is a tool. It has it’s uses. But in my experience, you don’t break up dog fights using a clicker. You dont’ call off a young stockdog going after a bolting sheep with a clicker. You may TRAIN the recall using a clicker. At some point you have to enforce it that it isn’t intended to be voluntary. Punishment, negative reinforcement, etc, can vary from “time out”, taking away the stock, recall using a long line, etc. But I want to see a video teaching a hard core car chaser to never chase cars with clicker ONLY, only “positive” before I buy off on it. A lot of times those who are “no corrections” don’t even recognize a correction (like “time out”) when they use it. Even Pryor’s theories on orca and dolphin training has had modifications — don’t perform, don’t get the fish, don’t get out of the tank, etc. There’s a lot more to – or + negatives than “being cruel” or heavy handed. And abandoning all negatives is, IMO, ineffective.
Peggy Richter.
Some pet dogs don’t need any training at all – from puppyhood, they are well mannered, and live to please – no correction beyond a harsh “NO!” yelled at them is ever needed. They don’t need to learn to sit – they behave well without it. They come when called, without training – they know you are calling, so they come to you. They have no working/ sporting/ hunting or wild instincts that need suppressing.
IMO, from a mega point of overall veiw, what dog training needs is for more breeders to breed “born to please” pet dogs like these. Not the answer you wanted to read?
Maybe you want a muleheaded contrary onery dog full of piss and vinegar, who desires to run, chase, yap, fight, and have his own way – that way you can teach him?
Whatever floats your boat.
Peggy, I really really do NOT understand why pro-force trainers continually use “you don’t break up dog fights with a clicker” line as some kind of argument against clickers as if it were some kind of “gotcha” statement. NO CLICKER TRAINER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD has ever made such a claim. And if you want to define “clicker, positive only” to exclude any form of correction, or to exclude providing a dog information when it’s wrong, then you’ve just set up a meaningless strawman.
I’m not aware of any credible “positive” trainer who NEVER provides clear “that’s not it” information to the dog. They just chose not to use strong, possibly painful physical aversives such as collar jerking, hanging or “vibration” collars.
But maybe the new mantra of the pro-force trainers will be that “psychological manipulation is worse than physical force”.
Geez, you guys….there is, and has been, a whole huge spectrum of training out there…not just the so-called “force training” on one hand and “purely positive” on the other. (And I think I’ve seen most of it)
I started formal dog training in 1953 with a timid, potentially fear-biter Cocker Spaniel. By the time he earned his CDX, he thought he owned the world; travelled everywhere, worked as a photographer’s model, won Obedience trials… And our class trainer was an ex-Marine war dog trainer who understood both people and dogs. Yes, we used “choke collars”, but they were NEVER used to choke or hang the dog! The mantra was “keep that lead loose!” and the small tug on the collar was to interrupt, distract, redirect the dog as needed, and always, as soon as the dog responded, immediate and meaningful praise, play, or other reward. Great emphasis was placed on proper timing and appropriate corrections.
Yeah. 1953. Long before the operant conditioning reached the dog world.
“Correction” meant exactly what the dictionary says: “to make right”. It was not “punishment” in the sense of retribution or of violence. Any physical means used was the minimum required to elict the desired response. But, dogs were expected to learn that “some things are not optional”.
And guess what? The vast majority of those dogs worked happily, willingly. Obedience judges penalized severely any dog that showed signs of being cowed or hesitant or fearful. The observers at ringside (trainers themselves, for the most part) were even quicker to recognize, and deplore, any such signs of improper training.
The dog people I knew welcomed advancing knowledge, such as done by people such as Milo Pearsall (forget his book, it gives nothing of the real Milo and his skills with dogs), Ian Dunbar, Jack Volhard, Patricia McConnell, and other good dog people whom I’ve seen working with dogs. And yes, there were a few who chose to be” OMG!alphas” , for whatever reasons consciously or unconciously…but I shall refrain from naming any.
So, please, do not blaspheme all dog training of past years as “cruel” or “violent” or “force based”. It just ain’t necessarily so.
I should better have said: “Great emphasis was placed on proper timing of appropriate corrections and praise or other positive reinforcement”.
Just to make it more clear to today’s readers.
Peggy – that was just the “assignment” I gave to myself for my last Dog Training Course with CASI. And to do it by shaping, which means without ANY verbal or gesticular instructions to the dog at all.
I resolved to teach my dog to knock over a yogurt cup placed on the floor. And of course, when I simply set the cup on the floor, she ran right over to it and took it in her mouth.
Now I have to back up and explain for those who may not know what the clicker does and how it works. In the film I spoke about “charging the clicker” which is nothing more than using respondent conditioning (Pavlov) to couple the sound of a click with the receiving of a food reward. Click=food delivery. This is an important concept. YOU NEVER CLICK AND DO NOT REWARD. You can always adjust what and how much.
Ok, so the first step was to prevent her è(notice I do not say “stop”!) from taking the cup in her mouth. So I placed her in a “sit” and then placed the cup about 10 feet away from her. I then gave her her release cue and clicked with her very first step. Because she’s been conditioned to expect the treat after the click, she did NOT go over to the cup, but instead came to me. I then guided her back to the release point and did this again. in the course of the next 5 minutes, I “clicked” her to within about 3 inches of the cup. Step by step.
At this point I put her back at her release point and positioned myself so that the cup was between us, but I was now about 6 inches from the cup. I released her and clicked when she was a couple inches from the cup. Since I was already “ther” she did what she normally does when she gets a reward. She sat down and I treated her. So we were now in a line:
Vela … cup … me
Now I did nothing. I waited. A clicker trained dog learns this game. “What do I NOW have to do to get a click=treat?” Ok, she started doing “stuff”. She walked over to me and licked me. No click. She sat down next to me. No click. She lay down next to me. Click and treat right there as she was laying down, before she could sit up. Then I waited again. She look at me. No click. She looked at the cup. Click and treat. She looked at me again. No click. She looked again at the cup. Click and treat. Now after eating the treat, she looked at the cup. Click and treat. She looked at the cup again. No treat. She stretched her neck to sniff the cup. Click and treat. She stretched her neck to sniff the cup again. Click and treat. Now she sniffed the cup and … no click. So she sniffed once again and looked at me. No click. then she sniffed it again and it fell over. Click and treat. I set up the cup again and she sniffed it until it fell over. I clicked and treated and said “touch”. We repeated this about 6-7 times. Then I backed her up about 2 feet and said “touch”. She went over and knocked the cup over. Click and treat.
I didn’t take it any further, but the next step would be to differentiate: Practice “touching” and practice “bringing”. but I don’t really have a big use for that, so I didn’t do it.
The whole operation I described, while taking about 10 minutes to write, took less than 5 minutes to teach. We repeated this whole operation the next day in about 2 minutes. And on the third day, as soon as I released her and said “touch” she went over and knocked over the cup. Which means she did NOT take it in her mouth.
Now whether you teach your dog this OR a positively taught “leave it” ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNAOe1djDyc ), you will have a dog that will not simply take everything in it’s mouth. It’s not rocket science, but like any training system it needs to be understood and learned.
P.S. – I did a 5 minute session today, after not having done this for a long time with Vela.
1) reintroduced “cup” = touch yogurt cup.
2) did some generalization as to perspective.
3) introduced differentiation with “fass” (retrieve).
using Clicker Training’s shaping technique. Here is a closed version of this film I might open to the general public at a later time:
This shows, that it definately is possible to relatively quickly teach a dog to NOT retrieve something in that you put another behavior on cue, namely other than retrieving an object. Since dogs do not intrinsically understand any english word, there is nothing stopping me from using the cue “cup” for any object that Vela should only touch but not retrieve. She doesn’t have a clue as to what the word “cup” really means. ;-)
Had to take down the YouTube film – something got screwed up with the uploading to YouTube. Am re-uploading it now and will post the URL ASAP.
Sorry!
OK – this URL for the film, that I re-uploaded.
sorry for the inconvenience!
Wow some people really like to argue!
I’ve been in the training field since 1992 and have used many methods. What I have found is that most people who poo poo clicker training as a good method simply don’t really understand it. (The thinking dog by Gail Fisher is the best book I’ve found on the subject for anyone who cares as well as the video “The power of training with markers” by Leerburg.)
For those interested in reading about dog training through the years I HIGHLY recommend “Always Faithful” A memoir of the Marine dogs of WW2. Written by Captain William W Putney D.V.M., U.S.M.C (ret)
You might be surprised at the methods they used.
It is true that force methods were developed for working dogs. Not all dogs can take that pressure for that very reason. Not all dogs were bred for a working purpose after all. And why on earth wouldn’t we want a better relationship with our dogs? Perhaps it is because some people LIKE to be dictators in their world. Just a thought.
Several weeks ago I reported that I, to prove a point, decided to teach Vela to touch an object instead of just retrieve it.
The new behavior was to go up to and touch an object, not take it in her mouth and bring it to me, which as a Retriever, she does in her sleep.
Actually the new behavior has now been shaped and put on cue, the cue being “cup”. The object we’d been working with was a yogurt cup. Vela already had learn and performs flawlessly the cue “bring”. The idea now is to establish dependable discrimination between the two cues.
Tonight, here’s how our training went:
1) started the post-shaping exercise as usual. Yogurt cup is on the floor about 6 feet from Vela. I give the cue “cup” and she goes and touches it with her nose. (Nose touches are about 90% – if she misses and I do not do anything, she will then look at it and stomp at it, while looking back at me). Repeated this 4 more times.
2) gave the cue “bring” and she took the cup in her mouth and brought it to me (no pointing prompt given)
3) then 3 times “cup” and each time she only touched the cup.
4) another “bring” and she brought it to me.
5) another “cup” and she only touched it.
Eureka!
6) I collected the the cup and put down a miniature soccer ball (that came with a kiddy soccer set – I want to teach her to nose touch the soccer ball to the goal for a planned sports Choreo). I gave the cue “cup” and she nose touched the ball. 2 more repetitions of “cup” and each time she nose-touched the ball.
7) I gave the cue “bring” and she brought the ball to me.
8) I then gave the cue “cup” and she nose touched the ball. One more repetition.
9) I gave the cue “bring” and she brought me the ball.
10) I gave the cue “cup” and she nose-touched the ball.
I will in the next few days do this with other random objects (discrimination and generalization) before attempting the same with our plastic bottles, which she up to now has only ever taken into her mouth.
For those hung up on the language, here are the two discriminatory cues:
1 – “cup” = nose touch whatever object there is to touch
2 – “bring” = bring whatever object there is to bring
It’s also given me some more experience in training “against” FAP (Fixed Action Pattern) or as behaviorists prefer “general behavior trait”)
i don’t know how, but i missed this post completely –
and it’s an excellent thread! i read every reply.
Emphasis Added – QUOTE:
“However, this new philosophy [Edit: ‘partnership’]
is causing a huge upsurge in the number of problem pets, since it renders the average pet uncontrollable to the average person.
We never used to see so many out-of-control dogs
(and dogs that threaten to bite to get their own way)
nor so many frustrated owners who have no idea how to rectify the situation… but I’ve watched that grow apace with treats, clickers, and “positive only” training (and the mistaken notion that the “old ways” are all “dominance and punishment”).
———————————–
i see plenty of out-of-control dogs, but they are far more likely to be UNtrained in any way, than trained with a marker [click, flash, Yes!, whatever].
the huge majority of the dogs who “threaten to bite”
IME are either seriously undersocialized, fearful,
or defensive – and again, NOT trained with a marker,
but many times have been punished – for housetraining errors that truth to tell, are always the human’s fault;
for training mistakes that use jerks, chokes, pokes, etc, to punish wrong answers; or thru the use of aversives to control, confine or train: shock-fence, anti-bark shock-collar, wireless-shock EXCLUSION zones, prong collars, choke-collars, and other physical punishment using pain, or emotional punishment using intimidation, threats, confrontation or fear to control or ‘correct’ / punish.
i have yet in over 25-years of training, had a dog arrive
with a client who had trained using a clicker, AND THE DOG USED BITES OR THREATS TO BITE to achieve any desired purpose – ever; the sole exception to that is bites, nips or air-snaps to warn-off someone causing pain or fear [the vet, the vet-tech, the groomer…], but never in a training situation, or normal everyday life – and a dog who has been hit by a car and is being examined is not in a training scenario, nor in everyday circumstances.
in sum, the only dogs who used teeth IME have been untrained thugs, or defensive dogs who had already experienced punishment;
and the Most-Likely dogs of all, again looking at the past decade, have been ZAPPED by a so-called “negative reinforcement” use of the shock-collar [preceded, DUH, by pos-P in the form of shock!],
or whose owners have followed Koehler or a certain popular TV-host who promotes Dumbinance, Pack-Theory, physical interrupters and physical punishment, flooding, the use of pain, threats or intimidation and confrontation.
pos-R methods have never [yet] brought a dog to me for training or B-Mod who bit or threatened to bite, except under extraordinary circs where in many cases, the bite was JUSTIFIED – and did not represent ‘bad’ behavior.
cheers, and an excellent discussion – i want to see the videos, the cup/bring exercises sound interesting.
thanks to *leonard for the on-camera project,
– terry
terry pride, APDT-Aus, apdt#1827, CVA, TDF
Update on “touch vs retrieve”. The cup is now old fish. We’ve been generalizing the locations since the beginning. The past 2 weeks we’ve also been generalizing the objects. this now works for any object I target with “touch” (since changed from “cup” BTW) and “fass” (German for “bring”).
And for those who might be interested, a little film in impulse control, “leave”, “wait” and ???